Denver school board elections are in November and the jockeying is only starting to begin for what is likely to be another rousing and bruising campaign for four seats up for election.

[media-credit name=”Denver Post file photo ” align=”alignright” width=”270″][/media-credit] Denver school board elections will be Nov. 5, and four seats will be on the ballot. Term-limited board member Jeanne Kaplan, left, is the only member whose seat will be vacant. Andrea Merida, right, says she will run again for her southwest Denver seat.

Meg Schomp on Tuesday became the first person to formally announce a campaign for the board. Schomp, a mother of two, is running for Jeanne Kaplan’s soon-to-be vacant seat in District 3, which represents central Denver. Kaplan is term-limited.

Two have potential incumbents, Mary Seawell and Andrea Merida, will be seeking re-election. The seat that was occupied by Nate Easley Jr., who stepped down last month, will be filled by the school board in the coming weeks. Tonight, the board holds a meeting to winnow down the nine possible replacements for Easley.

Both Merida and Seawell have said they will run for re-election.Read more…

Hancock throughout the 2011 mayoral campaign and in the early months of his administration has stressed the importance of education and said that he would make endorsements in the school board race.

Haynes has been a Denver city councilwoman, appointee under Mayor John Hickenlooper and most recently worked as an administrator for Denver Public Schools. She is running for the city-wide, at-large position against four other candidates: Roger Kilgore, John Daniel, Jacqueline Carole Shumway and Frank E. Deserino.

High stakes are tied to this year’s school board election, which typically has noticeably low voter turnouts. Three of Denver’s seven board seats are up for grabs. And the current board has been divided on almost every important vote: separated between those board members who support DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg and his reforms and those who lean more favorably to the teachers’ union views.

A student works on a number diagram during the first day of school at Amos Steck Elementary in Denver.

One month.

That’s all that’s left until Denver voters begin getting ballots for the district’s school board elections.

Yet, there’s been barely a whisper of electoral activity, which is par for the course in these typically low-key races.

But make no mistake, the stakes in the Nov. 1 Denver Public Schools board elections are quite high. If the minority voting bloc on the board (Arturo Jimenez, Jeannie Kaplan, and Andrea Merida) get one like-minded vote they will gain a majority.

If so, it’s pretty certain current Superintendent Tom Boasberg will be quickly booted from his position and with him will go reforms that have been so painstakingly implemented.

Nate Easley Jr., board president, has yet to announce his endorsement. An earlier edit of this post incorrectly said that Easley had endorsed. Easley has given campaign contributions to both Romer and Hancock.

Arturo Jimenez, who tonight is announcing his campaign to regain his Northwest Denver seat in November’s election, also said he is undecided.

Romer has called to speak to him twice about an endorsement. Hancock has yet to reach out, he said.

“That may help me make my decision,” said Jimenez, who added that he is not pleased with either candidate’s education plan.

“I am very disappointed that the two candidates in the race are the furthest away from me in terms of education issues,” Jimenez said.

The endorsements are interesting because DPS has been such a key factor in the mayoral race up to this point. Candidates before the May 3 election were hyper-focused on the affairs of the school district. The district’s reform plans were, in many ways, the only litmus test being used.

The education issue has quieted down in the runoff campaign between Romer and Hancock, because the two are mostly aligned on the issues facing DPS.Read more…

Colorado open meetings law requires prior public notice of meetings in which three or more members of a local public body gather to discuss public business.

The suspicion is that the three are planning to sue their own school district. None of the board members has explained what they are up to, or apologized for the incident. Unbelievably, one of the gang of three has asked for an apology from school board president Nate Easley Jr., who had asked that the three be publicly censured.

What’s getting lost in the fighting is the importance of the mission to turn around troubled schools in northeast Denver, including Montbello and Green Valley Ranch. These three board members should make a commitment to addressing the proposal before them honestly, and with an eye toward refining the plan instead of trashing it.

Maybe her tweet, which incidentally was retweeted to me by someone else, was an attempt at humor. If it was, it wasn’t very funny.

Those who generally favor school reform do not have the freedom, she writes in a posting on EdNews Colorado, to question administration efforts in an effort to improve them. The bloc of three opponents on the seven-member board would seize upon questions from the other four as a sign of weakness.

Instead four of us are serving on the board as offensive linemen creating a buffer around the superintendent so he can move the ball down the field. We are blocking the minority position for the simple reason that if we don’t block they will take the superintendent out. And believe me, in this current environment they absolutely would take him out. Any critical question around implementation on FNE ( Far North East) will be seized by a critic as a sign not that the plan needs to be better but as ammunition on why to kill it.

Seawell’s post is a response to the allegations that the obstructionist bloc of three met secretly with an outside non-profit legal organization in apparent violation of the state’s open meetings laws. Read more…

Denver Public Schools Superintendent Tom Boasberg said today that he’s thrilled community groups got behind the new middle school options in northwest Denver, boosting the number of students who have pledged to attend in the fall.

Boasberg, who visited the Denver Post editorial board on Thursday, was responding to comments made by DPS board member Andrea Merida, as described in this Denver Post story.

Boasberg’s comments were the latest in the ongoing philosophical battle between the superintendent of the troubled school district and three school board members who are resisting the reforms he favors.

One of those reforms was the reshaping of Lake Middle School, a low-achieving school, and the opening of two highly successful West Denver Prep charters in northwest Denver.

Several DPS board members objected vociferously, and the numbers released by Boasberg, a day in advance of a couple of controversial school board votes, seemed designed as a way of showing DPS was right in pursuing the changes. Read more…

A teaser: “[W]hat happened at Monday night’s school board meeting goes beyond the pale. If this isn’t a rule of politics, it should be: Before you pull a nasty, mean-spirited, back-stabbing stunt, make sure something substantially beneficial will result, at least from your perspective.

“What new school board member Andrea Merida did yesterday failed that test in spectacular fashion. And let’s name some more names. Political pros like consultant Steve Welchert and lawyer Mark Grueskin, along with incumbent board member Jeanne Kaplan were partners in Merida’s act of betrayal.”

Joey Bunch has been a reporter for 28 years, including the last 12 at The Denver Post. For various newspapers he has covered the environment, water issues, politics, civil rights, sports and the casino industry.